I installed kodi using apt-get, but when I ran kodi (either through the Raspbian menu or at the command line), nothing seemed to happen. I could use top to see that kodi.bin was running, but I saw no evidence of such. I found this thread and followed the instructions, but I see the same results. I've tried both kodi and kodi-standalone. What could I be doing wrong?

spartanhooah wrote:I installed kodi using apt-get, but when I ran kodi (either through the Raspbian menu or at the command line), nothing seemed to happen. I could use top to see that kodi.bin was running, but I saw no evidence of such. I found this thread and followed the instructions, but I see the same results. I've tried both kodi and kodi-standalone. What could I be doing wrong?

Are you connected via VNC?

Minimal Kiosk Browser (kweb)
Slim, fast webkit browser with support for audio+video+playlists+youtube+pdf+download
Optional fullscreen kiosk mode and command interface for embedded applications
Includes omxplayerGUI, an X front end for omxplayer

Kodi uses an OenGL ES interface, which is not viśible on VNC. And you wouldn't be able to watch video across VNC anyway.

The RealVNC service mode server (installed by default in Raspbian) actually does allow you to see kodi, so long as you have the "experimental direct capture mode" enabled in the vnc options dialog. This uses a lower level screen capture method, which can capture directly rendered graphics, as well as the text console.

It's still not great for watching video (since there's no sound over vnc), but it can be useful for control and setup purposes.

It also gets confused if you start kodi from the X desktop, so I'd recommend not running X and starting kodi directly from the command line.

Ok, thanks for the info. Wasn't planning on watching video over VNC, just getting it set up so I can stream elsewhere. Toggling that setting worked, thank you! Of course, it made VNC a lot slower, but that's tolerable for just getting Kodi set up.

Well, I spoke too soon. Kodi starts up, but it doesn't respond to anything. When I kill the process, the desktop doesn't show up again, and I have to restart the Pi to get it back. What's going on now?

Are you starting Kodi from the desktop menu? If so, there is a known issue where VNC still sends the input to the X server, and Kodi never receives it. You can work around this by stopping the desktop (you can do this by making your Pi boot to the command line, or as a one-off, do "sudo systemctl stop lightdm"), and starting Kodi directly from the console.

spartanhooah wrote:
When I kill the process, the desktop doesn't show up again, and I have to restart the Pi to get it back. What's going on now?

If this would be better for the Kodi forums, let me know.

I think this is a known issue with Kodi. You can usually get it back by switching VT several times with e.g. Ctrl-Alt-F2 then Ctrl-Alt-F1. If you are running the viewer on a Linux machine, you will need to use the commands to enable Ctrl and Alt from the viewer's menu (accessible via F8) to avoid switching VT on the viewer machine itself.

When you use VNC to connect to an X11 (or Windows or Mac) desktop, the server is able to set and retrieve the position of the mouse pointer, since there are standard ways of doing this for these platforms. So when you move the mouse pointer within the viewer window, it can tell the server to move the pointer to the corresponding place. However, Kodi isn't running within a window system, and handles the positioning of the mouse pointer itself, hence VNC has no way of setting or retrieving this.

The VNC Viewer has an option called "Relative pointer motion", which is designed for this sort of scenario - which you can enable via the F8 menu. It works by just sending pointer movements, without trying to map the position of the pointer on the viewer to the server. One effect of this is that the viewer "grabs" the pointer, and you can't move it out of the viewer window without disabling relative pointer mode.

Well, now I've hit another snag. I noticed that Kodi 16.1 is out, but isn't yet in the Raspbian repositories. I found a guide to install the newer version at https://mtantawy.com/quick-tip-how-to-u ... pberry-pi/, which I followed. I ended up getting a segmentation fault when I started Kodi, so I removed Kodi and the additional repository, but now I still get segmentation faults when I try to start Kodi. Here's a pastebin of the log: http://pastebin.com/bKU4mYHb

Rascas wrote:Kodi on Raspberry Pi doesn't support X11 (it uses OpenGLES nad there is no standard for that), at least if you want hardware acceleration. And VNC isn't a streaming protocol even using dispmanx.

I don't understand. I'm not using X11 (as far as I'm aware), and I'm not trying to stream through VNC. I just want to get Kodi set up over VNC, then I'll use it to stream to whatever.

Rascas wrote:Kodi on Raspberry Pi doesn't support X11 (it uses OpenGLES nad there is no standard for that), at least if you want hardware acceleration. And VNC isn't a streaming protocol even using dispmanx.

I don't understand. I'm not using X11 (as far as I'm aware), and I'm not trying to stream through VNC. I just want to get Kodi set up over VNC, then I'll use it to stream to whatever.

Kodi isn't made to stream. Kodi is meant to be used directy not with VNC. And Kodi in the RPi doesn't support X11. The end.

You're being quite dismissive. If you read my previous posts, I was able to get Kodi working fine over VNC (which in my understanding is not X11). Kodi may not be made for streaming out-of-the-box, but it certainly can be used for that (c.f. http://www.wirelesshack.org/a-guide-to- ... shows.html).

I would like help getting the base Kodi (without any addons) back to the state that I had it before - where I could do some setup over VNC. If you think the Kodi forums would be more appropriate for that discussion, then just say so.

VNC is dependent of X11. Kodi on the RPi uses OpenGLES and doesn't have support for X11. I any OS. Never had...
You can use the new VNC server to control it, or any dispmanx VNC server, but they aren't streaming protocls...

Again, if you read my previous posts, setting up Kodi with an experimental feature of VNC is exactly what I was doing. I then tried to install a newer version of Kodi and things went south. I'm merely trying to recover to where I was.

spartanhooah wrote:Again, if you read my previous posts, setting up Kodi with an experimental feature of VNC is exactly what I was doing. I then tried to install a newer version of Kodi and things went south. I'm merely trying to recover to where I was.

You may have your special ideas about the use of kodi (which nobody seems to understand), but this is completely off topic in this thread. So start a new one with a matching title, please.

Minimal Kiosk Browser (kweb)
Slim, fast webkit browser with support for audio+video+playlists+youtube+pdf+download
Optional fullscreen kiosk mode and command interface for embedded applications
Includes omxplayerGUI, an X front end for omxplayer